


the powerful rendered powerless

by goldtracing



Series: the future is a fickle thing, so is the past [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: (or present?), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Turns to the Dark Side, BAMF Darth Vader, Cunning Darth Vader, Eldritch Anakin Skywalker, Everything goes sideways, Other, Past Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Revenge, Suitless Darth Vader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28528446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtracing/pseuds/goldtracing
Summary: When you create monsters, you shouldn’t be surprised when they surpass you.Or, Sidious bites off more than he can chew by letting Vader reach his full potential.
Relationships: Darth Sidious & Darth Vader, Sheev Palpatine & Anakin Skywalker
Series: the future is a fickle thing, so is the past [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815403
Comments: 3
Kudos: 83





	the powerful rendered powerless

**Author's Note:**

> This is yet another case of me being struck by lightning inspiration and promptly deciding to let my imagination carry me away. Enjoy!

Sidious was the most successful Sith there had ever been. While others had only dreamed of the power he held as Emperor, craved it with all the passion and obsession that only a Dark sider could ever hold, he had obtained it, manipulated people into giving what he coveted and refusing to relinquish it once he had it.

He had corrupted the Jedi Chosen One, made the promised messiah his own – and by the Force, the Dark really suited Anakin Skywalker better than anything else.

When he had dwelled in the Light, Skywalker had already been a bastion of power, a supernova condensed into human form. There had been so many times when he had regarded those around him with utter bafflement, as if the limits they were trying to impose on him were ludicrous. In his case they probably were.

It had been the Jedi that had always held him back, that had convinced him that there were restrictions to that that was possible for him. Anakin had bought into those falsehoods, and thus the lies had become truths.

In its own way, it had infuriated Sidious while he had been Chancellor, that the Jedi didn’t recognize Skywalker’s potential, and that what they saw scared them enough that they decided to shackle the boy.

But now Skywalker was free because the Dark had broken his chains. Because the Sith Lord had gone out of his way to implant his own thoughts and world views in the man when he had been but a naïve child.

_“You are strong and powerful, Anakin. For more connected to the Force than an ordinary Jedi. Even the Council has acknowledged that. So why should their rules apply to you?"_

_“Never before have I met such a stalwart and intelligent young man. You’re very different from the other people in the Republic, so much higher above their vices and toils.”_

As Darth Vader, the former Jedi was so much more impressive, no longer a bright beacon, a cluster of a thousand suns streaked with darkness. Rather the centre point of a galaxy with its collection of black holes.

Vader was so much more than mortal, being born of the Force – continually half here, half there as his thought processes didn’t ever follow the usual lines. He was always half submerged in the Force, not only with the Force being a sixth sense but being a fundamental part of him.

It made Sidious sometimes wonder if his apprentice even possessed the double helix DNA that was characteristic of humans, or if it was a strange assortment of molecules that dissembled and reassembled as they please as if they had their own sentiments. He wondered if Vader even processed exterior input the same way regular mortals did or if it was always combined with sensory information only the deepest of Force trances would grant.

As a Sith, Palpatine was greedy and ambitious and cunning. It simply wasn’t he enough that he could call the galaxy his own, he wanted more; much, much more.

So, he worked to tear down the mental roadblocks that his apprentice still had, that hindered him from unlocking his full power, so that he as Emperor would possess the mightiest weapon to have ever existed.

It worked – maybe even too well.

His presence became larger than life, until it was even tangible to the Force-blind, a pitch-black darkness that threatened to suffocate those in his closest vicinity. His smile became impossibly wide, kyber teeth that were visible in just the right light and golden eyes that were piercing, that cleaved the soul apart.

Vader unnerved courtiers and officers with how he read emotions from the most stone-faced people with little effort, that he could read minds in only a subconscious reflex. Yet it also caused people to gravitate towards him because sentients are always drawn to power. Something that Vader increasingly emitted as the years went by.

In the beginning it hadn’t worried the Emperor, because he had been utterly convinced that the pupil was under his thumb. It was only when he had nearly complied to one of Vader’s wishes unthinkingly, the former having adopted the trait of lacing his every spoken word with Force suggestions, did it dawn upon Sidious that he had made a fatal mistake. That had been over a decade into their relationship as master and acolyte.

He should have never given his blessings for his apprentice to uncover every mystery of the Force he could, should have never aided him in liquidating those mental blockades.

In the beginning of the end, he had still been able to make his stubborn student cower in front of him with sharp words and Lightning, had had the latter transfixed and subordinate to him after a thorough …lecture. Yet those tactics gradually had lost their effectiveness, Vader’s wit becoming sharper and more cunning, him becoming more resilient to pain, becoming more apt at warding off the standard attacks.

It was near the end that Sidious had realised that he had bitten off more than he could chew, that the Jedi’s fear of the Hero with No Fear had been well warranted. At that point, Vader had already established himself at the top of the pecking order, being firmly planted in life with both feet while Palpatine had lost touch with reality in his ivory tower.

It had then been too late to salvage the matter for him and he had become desperate, frantically clawing at the scrapes of power that he still had in an attempt to regain what he had once had held. Panickily he had clung onto the little control he had over his student, tried his best to re-establsh the myth that he was omnipotent and omniscient.

Yet the dynamics between them had long since changed, with Vader light-heartedly ignoring his Master’s wishes, and passing his own orders that contradicted those of Sidious. He would give the Emperor those cheeky and sly smiles that he had given Obi-wan and Padme in a different lifetime. Smiles that said that he would do as he saw fit, regardless of what they said. And Sidious found that his protests were hollow, his emotions pathetic, in face of a being whose shadow was alive.

_“What did you do on Aldreaan? I take that the Senator has been taken care off?”, Sidious asked in that hallmark oily voice of his. It intimidated many, convinced them to give him what he wanted without protest. That was when anybody even came to visit him. That was, when they weren’t already caught in Vader’s intricate web of influence._

_“No”, Darth Vader idly drawled, “I’ve done something better instead.”_

_“And what would that be?”, Sidious hissed, infuriated at the other’s disobedience._

_Vader gave him a smile that was so reminiscent of Anakin that it made him sick. “You’ll see”, was the simple answer. And after a dramatic pause he added: “Or maybe you wouldn’t. It doesn’t matter anyway since you can’t change what I’ve done.”_

_Those words, that blatant disregard for the power of his Highness, the absence of piety, was what enraged the Emperor._

_At the sight as him raising his hands to deliver an onslaught of electricity, Vader just laughed at him. It made Palpatine feel so vulnerable, as if all his actions counted for naught. He could just see how the eldritch was now stitched into the very essence of the man that tilted his head in condescending chuckles, see how Vader’s shadow danced on the wall behind him, moving at its own accord with its long fingers stretching out towards him._

_Hear as the apprentice said: “My beloved Master”, with the term being laced with venom, spat out as if it was something derogatory, “you have become so weak. You shouldn’t let your emotions control you because they are wrong. You should be control over them as well as your circumstances. Although,guess what, you aren’t in control of either of them. Not anymore”_

It was nauseating to know that he also had to dance to Vader’s flute, let matters take their natural course as the apprentice surpassed the master. The former Jedi played on his fears, because he had taught him that all those who hold power fear to lose it.

Of all the lessons he had to take to heart, why had it been that one?

It was a hair width away from the end that Sidious caught on that Vader had too many secrets that he kept from him. The latter was even shameless about it, admitted it freely when asked and refusing to indulge any further.

That resulted in sleepless nights for the Sith Lord, questions racing around his withered head. Was Padme still alive and he had been tricked into thinking otherwise? If that was the case, then had the child survived and did Vader know about it? Had Kenobi somehow miraculously endured, and the time Vader had brought him the Jedi’s lightsabre been a hoax? Was his pupil’s Force presence really as dark and as cold as the void between the stars or had his senses not been deceiving him and there were really sparks of light in his pupil? Had he grown sensile somewhere down the line to let this all come to pass?

The end came one sunny morning, spring on Coruscant, when he had been strolling through the garden. It had come around the bend in form of a rather happy Vader who had told him that his time was up. Palpatine had felt genuine, mind-numbing existential fear because he hadn’t wanted to die. Yet that hadn’t stopped him life force from flowing away when the once apprentice had chanted words in a language he had never heard before, yet one that his subconscious told him was the dialect of the Force itself.

**Author's Note:**

> I case you haven't guessed it already, that last paragraph is a nod to Darth Nililus from the Old Republic. Due to him being a Wound in the Force and a Dark Side User, he had such the life force from organisms even going so far as to suck entirely planets dry. While I don't see either Anakin or Vader as being a Wound in the Force, I do think at his full power Anakin would have been able to do something similar with some effort.


End file.
